Another Rodney King?

 

Did we learn anything from the Rodney King episode?  Apparently not, for now we have yet another case of police abuse of force caught on videotape, this time showing an officer from Inglewood, California throwing a hand-cuffed suspect on the hood of a car and then hitting him after the suspect allegedly grabbed the officer in the groin area.  Naturally, the suspect is a young black male, who happens to be mentally disabled and does not respond well to instructions.  What a Anormal@ response is when confronted by the police is not clearly defined - and never is in such cases.  But this is beside the point, for there are much deeper issues reflected in this single case. (As this is being written - July 12, 2002 - the outcome of this case is unknown but irrelevant to the issues I am raising.)

Hundreds of books and research reports dating back about 100 years show that the police institution has consistently been given the task of patrolling poor and minority communities, somewhat akin to the role of an Aarmy of occupation@ within a Acolony.@  In this case, we have a sort of Ainternal colony@ within the borders of our inner cities.  I once heard a police commander in New York City who himself described his role (and the role of his fellow officers) as literally an Aarmy of occupation@ (his words, not mine).

Historically, the police institution has been assigned the unenviable duty of maintaining Aorder@ in a stratified society by patrolling the Atrouble spots@ within decaying urban areas inevitably plagued by certain forms of crime (certainly not corporate crime) that are in turn products of the surrounding class society.  Like it or not, we are presented on a daily basis with two kinds of crimes and two types of justice - one for the privileged and the other for the non-privileged.  The police, in their role of an occupying army, are not at all concerned with the far more serious crimes of the rich and powerful (these multi-billion dollar crimes are Apoliced@ by various Aregulatory@ agencies and civil courts).  No corporate CEO=s or representatives from Enron, Worldcom or Andersen will ever feel handcuffs tightened around their wrists nor feel the hood of a squad car - everyday occurrences within minority communities.  It does not matter if the officers are white, black, or any other race - they all wear the same uniform and are in charge of enforcing Athe law.@  Whose law they are enforcing is another matter.

As in the Rodney King incident, the police were caught on tape Adoing their job@ as an Aarmy of occupation.@ And once again the police bureaucracy is rushing forward to put the proper Aspin@ on this incident, trying to explain away the officer=s behavior.  And they even arrested the man who shot the film, thereby diverting our attention away from the incident and the larger issues.  (What the man did prior to taping this incident is irrelevant to the real issues.) 

And what are the Areal issues@ here?  The most important issue here is the larger economic system - the Arotten barrel@ so to speak.  This incident has something in common with all the attention on corporate crime today.  The attention devoted to corporate crime (which takes in about a half a trillion dollars each year, compared to around $5 billion from Astreet crime@) is the fact that it was so obvious and they got caught.  In both cases we are emphasizing the so-called Arotten apples@rather than the Arotten barrel.@  In the case of corporate crime, the emphasis is on restoring faith in our economic system and the stock market - after all, portfolios are in danger, never mind the fact that only about 10 percent of the population own about 90 percent of all wealth, including stocks and bonds (and the overall wealth and income gap has widened in recent years).  The heads of corporate America and the government (often one and the same) need to get rid of these Abad guys@ rather than alter the system that produces them.  Within our capitalist system, centering around the survival of the fittest and profits, the typical CEO will do anything (including criminality) to adhere to the Abottom line@ of profits (investors tell the corporate managers to make profits, no matter how they do it).  Similarly, the young black male growing up in the ghetto will do all he can to survive and the individual police officers will do the same, as will their bosses.  We must, above all else, preserve the system itself, the benefits of which accrue mostly to a relatively small minority.

Meanwhile, when we have a society segregated by both class and race, almost by definition the police can be nothing other than the aforementioned Aarmy of occupation@ within these segregated areas.  And racial segregation has become more, not less, of a problem today than ever before.  This was the conclusion of a ground-breaking study a few years ago by two respectable scholars, Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton in their book American Apartheid.  Among the key findings from their study included the fact that about one-third of all African-Americans presently live in areas they call hypersegregated or under conditions of "intense racial segregation."  And along with such forms of segregation come the inevitable poverty, unemployment and underemployment, sub­standard housing, inadequate social services, high crime rates, and high rates of alcohol and drug abuse.  The police are called upon to sort of Amanage@these problems and not let things get Aout of hand@ (e.g., rioting).